


unafraid

by Amber



Series: Create Something Every Day! (October 2018) [17]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dating, F/F, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, October Prompt Challenge, Submissive Daisy Tonner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 17:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: Prompt 20: Heart.





	unafraid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zai42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/gifts).



"Do you want to come in?" offers Georgina ("Georgie, please,") Barker.

Sims isn't here. Well — that's what she's said, and there's none of the fearstink of a liar on her. Even the invitation just emphasizes her innocence. If she was hiding him she wouldn't want to risk Daisy finding out by letting her in the house. But — best to be sure, right?

"I could use a coffee," Daisy said, because she really could. Working without a partner doubles her foot traffic and paperwork and the sludge in the station pot is like swallowing mud.

Georgie smiles and widens the door.

Daisy whistles as she comes through. "Nice place, Barker. What do you do to afford this?"

"Mattresses," says Georgie with a straight face, and then laughs. "No, um, I record a podcast. One of our sponsors is a mattress company. We actually do pretty well? Long hours, but I've always been a bit of a workaholic."

Georgie has bought an espresso machine with her mattress money, and she taps out coffee grinds and presses them down with the ease of someone who has slung coffee for a living at some point. She has elegant wrists, thinks Daisy, watching her. Not like herself, all sharp angles and wide palms.

There's a noise of papers toppling from another room, and Daisy startles and freezes. Glances that way. "Someone else here?" she asks, casually suspicious.

"Oh," says Georgie. "No. No. That's probably..." she goes to a closed door and opens it, and a great big fluffy beast of a cat strolls unconcernedly out as Georgie peers in past him, sighs. Picks him up. "Knocked over Mummy's accounting again, didn't you," she says with longsuffering fondness, carrying the cat back to the kitchen. Daisy feels her hackles lowering again.

"Do you like cats?" Georgie asks.

"I mean. They're all right, I suppose."

In answer, Georgie passes the cat into her arms. He's fluffy and heavy, and makes Daisy nervous about not being able to get to her gun quick enough, but he also purrs like he enjoys being held and something about that puts her at ease.

"That's The Admiral," says Georgie. "An absolute nuisance. Do you have any pets, detective?"

"No," says Daisy, looking down into the Admiral's squashed face while the sound and scent of the coffee being made fills the room. She takes a couple more steps into the kitchen, leans a hip against the counter. She feels surprisingly safe here, as though Georgie's confidence instead of the usual nervousness people get around her is bolstering her own calm in turn. Maybe it's just that Georgie doesn't seem like much of a threat anyway; there's no muscle on her, and she's a good head or more shorter than Daisy.

"How do you take it?" Georgie asks, and Daisy wrenches her gaze back up from where she's been considering the curve of the other woman's body. She doesn't blush, but she is clearly caught, and the amused quirk of Georgie's lips says she knows that. "Milk?" she prompts, sly. "Sugar?"

"Milk's fine," Daisy hears herself say. She feels far away from herself, aware that her body has heated through, that something in her wants this woman in a soft way, a sex way, but not quite able to properly get the shape of it. Unfamiliar with a feeling that doesn't have sharp edges, wary of letting it get too close in case she turns out to be wrong.

She puts the cat down, and he winds around their ankles with a couple of pitiful meows before concluding that they aren't in the kitchen to feed him and pacing away again. Daisy watches him go. Domesticated little predator. She can't imagine anything she possibly wants less.

But when Georgie gives her a silky cappuccino she says "Thank you," and drinks it sitting on the couch. Doesn't put her feet on the coffee table like she would at home. Doesn't flinch when Georgie sits close next to her instead of the armchair crosswise. 

"Weird, having a cop in my home," she admits. "I'm sure you're great and all, but I used to go to a lot of protests when I was at Oxford. Queer black women don't really get what they need from the system as it stands, so they have to fight."

"Yeah," says Daisy, and this is something her and Basira have talked about a _lot_ , so she doesn't get defensive, just rubs her jaw. "Don't worry, I'm not some blue lives matter prick. I'd like to change the system too. Gets harder once you've been sectioned."

"Sectioned?" echoes Georgie, curiously.

"Just a classification thing. You sign a Section 31 form, and it sort of pigeonholes you from then on." Daisy knows better than to give specifics. 

"And coming to my door asking about my ex boyfriend is Section 31?" Georgie asks, amused. 

Daisy's shoulders go tight. "Yeah," she says, and drains the last of her coffee before there can be any further smalltalk like this.

Georgie puts a hand on her knee. Daisy looks down at it. It's small, with trimmed nails that are painted matte black. Daisy likes the way it's a lighter shade around the edges, the way the skin of each knuckle of her finger shades a darker black.

"Why don't you," says Georgie, "Ask me for my number."

She doesn't move her hand. It just rests there, small and pretty.

"In case you need to ask me any more questions about Jon," says Georgie.

Daisy's stomach is flipping wildly, her heart a million miles a second. She doesn't do this. She thinks she's broken out in a light flop sweat. She doesn't know _how_ to do this. Neither of them move.

"Would you like to get dinner with me?" she manages to ask, at the other end of the distant tunnel of disassociation. "Like, on a date." She realizes with a different kind of twinge that this could be harassment, abuse of power, probably the exact kind of thing Georgie hates, and stands abruptly. "You don't have to. Forget it, yeah."

"No," Georgie says, standing as well. She's smiling in a way Daisy can't look directly at. "I'd really like that, actually."

\- 

The first date is almost nothing. The restaurant is mediocre, neither cheap nor ridiculously expensive, food just average enough that it's not crowded on a Saturday night.

"Think of it like a transient experience," Georgie says. She bumps their feet lightly together beneath the table; she wore heels, Daisy has on her cleanest pair of docs. "This place will shut down in a month. Nowhere this shit can survive in Central London."

"Not unless the chef is someone from TV," Daisy says, and Georgie laughs. It makes her neck look longer, her head thrown back. Daisy wants to put her mouth on it.

They don't, though. Just split the bill and go their separate ways, even though Daisy is thrumming like a wasp's nest. Thinking back on it, she worries that they were both waiting for the other to make a move, worries that there was nothing to really distinguish it from grabbing a bite with Basira (her former partner, her only friend, the only measuring stick she has to reference whatever is unfolding here.)

But Georgie calls and says she had a lovely time, and they arrange to go out again.

-

The second date is just a quick coffee date, both of them midweek busy, and Georgie wrinkles her nose at her latte and scolds Daisy teasingly: "This place is truly awful. You would have been better taking me to a Costa."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you're picky about your coffee," says Daisy, amused.

"I'm not picky! I just don't want to drink something where they've overtamped and then scalded the milk, it's completely unprofessional. Look, taste this." She holds out her cup, and Daisy takes it, puts her mouth where Georgie's mouth just was, makes eye contact. There's an electric moment where everything else goes still. Then she tastes the coffee and it all comes rushing back.

"Dunno," says Daisy with a shrug, handing her cup back with a carefully straight face. "Tastes like coffee to me. Maybe you're just high maintenance."

"I am not!!" Georgie squawks, offended, thumping her arm as Daisy laughs (and shivers, just a little bit, just a little.)

-

The third date is the best restaurant Daisy can afford.

"I feel like you're going to propose," Georgie says, smiling, as fearless in this setting as she is everywhere. Daisy thinks about going to one knee for her and her head spins.

\- 

They don't kiss until the fifth date, though by then the time they spend together is nothing like the time Daisy has spent with other women, and nothing like the times she's dated men. 

Men are always champing at the bit to get at her, want to fight her in a way that has her putting them on their knees just to prove she's better. And she likes the way they're scared of her, and she likes the way they'd do anything she asks, and she likes the way they cry when she refuses to let them fuck her and makes them jerk off onto her boots instead, the thought of their hands or mouths or dicks on her cunt antithetical. She likes men. Of course she likes men.

It's just not the way she likes Georgie.

Their first kiss, Georgie takes the lapels of Daisy's shirt and hauls her downwards. "Honestly," she says, "I wanted to do this last Saturday but my Lyft driver showed up and I didn't want— I didn't want him to think it was for him."

Daisy doesn't say anything, frozen with Georgie's words whispering across her mouth. Her eyes wide. She lifts a hand and brushes her fingers across the fade of Georgie's sideshave, feeling it tingle under her fingers the way she's wanted to since they met.

"Nice, right?" says Georgie, still not kissing her. "Sometimes I just catch myself touching it over and over."

Something fizzles down Daisy's spine and into her cunt and she presses in, all demanding teeth, feeling out the shape of Georgie's skull under her broad hand. But Georgie won't be drawn into games of violence, of withholding and chase; she shifts their angle and soothes open Daisy's mouth, letting their tongues become warm entanglements, everything soft and very sure.

"Lovely," she says when she pulls back, smiling.

"Yeah," says Daisy, her voice harsh in her own ears. "Fuck. Let me do that again sometime."

Georgie smiles wider. "Yeah? I wasn't sure you'd want to."

"We've been — we have been dating, right?" 

"Yes," laughs Georgie. She finds so much funny but Daisy never feels mocked. "Oh, yes, of course. But trust me," and her tone goes dry. "That really doesn't actually have anything to do with sex."

Daisy's understanding of this is a tangle that has its roots in her innermost places, and she's never really been interested in opening herself up and excavating the contents. There are more important things to worry about than how each thought connects to thought, or how she believed past boyfriends when they told her there was a debt to be paid, or why just one kiss with this complicated, beautiful woman has her sparking and fractured and ready to give herself over.

"I do want to," she says. "I want all of that with you." Sex. She can't say it. But she can feel it written in her body: find me, catch me, take me.

Georgie strokes her hair, calm as always. "Brilliant," she whispers, pleased. Gives her a quick sweet peck. "But not tonight, you've got work in the morning. And my cab's here. Goodnight, Daisy."

-

The eighth date is back at Georgie's apartment. It's been weeks since Daisy knocked on this door in her blues, looking for a man she'd since found. She never told Georgie about Basira. The look on her face when she came upon Daisy with a knife pressing slowly into Jon's throat, like she'd seen a feral thing. Her slumped resignation as she'd signed the contract. Her distance. If there had ever been anything between them before, it's changed. They're still bound by the knowledge of all the fucked up shit in the world, still allies, but Daisy isn't sure they're still friends.

She hasn't told Basira about Georgie, either. She doesn't know why.

Of course, all this makes her feel stupid when Georgie pauses in the middle of leading her through to the bedroom and admits, "I have something I have to tell you."

Daisy thinks of other bedrooms she's seen, meat stapled to the walls or pits dug into the floor or the thick, slimy cocoon in one. Imagines symbols scrawled on the walls in blood. Imagines eyes. "What," she says, her voice dead. 

"When we met," Georgie says, unflinching, "I was letting Jonathan Sims stay in my spare room. I knew he was being framed by his spooky boss for murder."

"Oh." The betrayal of it drops through Daisy's stomach like a stone. "Well, fuck, Georgie."

Now her mind is whirling with other scenarios, and she drops Georgie's hand, takes a step back. "How could you — Did you — seduce me, so I wouldn't—"

"I mean, sort of?" Georgie admits. "But I really like you. I do. I know Jon's scared of you because you kill people like me and him, but—"

The betrayal goes icy. "You and him," Daisy says, flat. Who knows she's here? Her gun, why didn't she have her fucking gun. Are there cuffs in her purse? Where did she leave it, the kitchen? No, the dinner table, next to her chair— 

"Daisy!" Georgie says, voice like a bullet, and Daisy stops, turns back to her. She's breathing hard, something wild and dangerous in her eyes, clawing her chest, trying to get out.

"Look at me," says Georgie. "Do I look like a monster?"

"Monsters don't look like monsters," Daisy says, trying to remember who knows she's here. "Not always."

Georgie acknowledges that with a small nod. "All right. Well, I don't feel like a monster, but how about I tell you my story and you decide. And if you think I'm dangerous, you can take me out. I won't fight you."

"Do I look like the Archivist?" Daisy snarls. But Georgie just looks at her, steady, always steady, unafraid of Daisy even as Daisy is thinking about what in this room she could use to kill her.

"Fine," she relents finally, bitter as bad coffee. "Let's get this over with, then."

-

When Georgie is finished telling her story, Daisy is very quiet. The Admiral pads along the sofa and into her lap, and she pats him absently.

"So you're not afraid," she says, working through it. "Of anything. And that's it?"

"That's it," Georgie confirms.

"Not even that I might kill you right now?"

Georgie breathes a soft laugh, fond. "Oh, Daisy," she says. "You were never going to kill me."

Daisy isn't actually as sure as she is, but maybe it's good that Georgie thinks that. Makes it easier for them to put this behind them. And she does, she thinks, she does want to move past it. They've both had strangenesses happen to them. But Daisy knows there's only one person verging on a monster in this room, and it's not Georgie Barker.

For once, though, the way viciousness takes her ebbs without action or guilt. Daisy is surprised to find that she can still want, that all her hunger for blood can be twisted into something else, something supplicative. She looks at her Georgie, sitting neat and ready in the warm light of the living room lamp. Looks at her mouth and remembers kissing it. How good it had felt when Georgie pulled her hair, just a little. Wonders if she could hold Daisy down without fear. Hold her down and make her take all the pleasure she's denied herself and denied herself until something in her snaps. She wants to be the one crawling on the floor begging to be allowed to come. She wants that pretty mouth between her legs until she screams.

Daisy lets out a long sigh. The Admiral purrs and digs his claws into her leg through her trousers. Both of them thoroughly domesticated predators.

"Right then," says Daisy, easing the cat aside and standing."Let's go to bed."


End file.
